One man wants to service soldiers on leave, one woman was taught about multiple orgasms during an episode of The Antiques Roadshow . . . what happened when 10,000 people were asked to share their deepest desires?

When it comes to sex, there’s no such thing as a simple question. Even the most basic inquiry soon turns out to be loaded. Most sex surveys start by asking the respondent whether they are male or female. Why not female or male? And what about all the other options – all the people who would describe themselves as neither or both? Why do surveys always ask people what they do with their bodies, instead of asking what they don’t – and why not? And how are we to deal with the peculiar fact that most sex exists only in memory; or, these days, on mobile phones.

My latest foray into this minefield – entitled Excuse Me, Would You Mind If I Asked You a Few Personal Questions About Sex? – is currently on display at the Wellcome Collection in London. The installation takes its cue from the pioneering scientists and statisticians whose work is documented in the collection’s larger show, The Institute of Sexology: Freud, Stopes, Mead, Masters and Johnson. It basically does what they all did: asks total strangers a lot of embarrassing questions. The idea is that you sit down at the end of the sexology show with a questionnaire, answering whichever of its 25 posers you fancy, then drop your answers into a padlocked box. This gets emptied once a week and a team of readers and myself select some of the most thought-provoking (and of course anonymous) thoughts about the nation’s sex life for immediate publication on the gallery walls.

The GlaxoSmithKline CEO, Sir Andrew Witty, said the Chinese drug market has slowed down dramatically over the past year but insisted that the drugmaker’s own business there is stabilising, as it unveiled second-quarter results that beat City expectations thanks to strong sales of new HIV drugs.

Witty also flagged up 40 new drugs and vaccines that are in mid- to late-stage development, half of which are expected to be on the market or filed for regulatory approval by 2020. He highlighted a new shingles vaccine, as well as treatments for chronic lung disease, severe asthma, anaemia and heart disease.

An eight-year-old boy from Baltimore who lost his hands and feet to a serious infection is the youngest patient to receive a double-hand transplant. A 40-person medical team used steel plates and screws to attach the old and new bones. Surgeons the Philadelphia children's hospital then painstakingly reconnected Zion Harvey's arteries, veins, muscles, tendons and nerves. Doctors say Harvey will spend several weeks in physical rehab at the hospital before returning home Continue reading...

Nick Lane’s and Matthew Cobb’s talks on their engrossing books about cracking the secrets of life and the genetic code are now available on video and have brought to mind an intriguing question…

At the weekend I reviewed two superlative volumes of popular science, The Vital Question by Nick Lane and Life’s Greatest Secret by Matthew Cobb. Lane dives to the ocean depths to pick apart the energetics of the chemistry that is likely to have given birth to life on Earth, while Cobb’s book is a masterful telling of the ideas, experiments and personalities that eventually cracked the genetic code.

Those tantalised by the books may be pleased to learn that both authors spoke about their subjects at the Royal Institution back in June and the videos of these short talks (which I attended) are now available at the RI Channel. I can recommend both presentations for anyone doubtful about the excitement of ideas conveyed by these two books.

Free-falling miles above the desert, his test spaceship ripped to pieces and the frigid air hard to breathe, pilot Peter Siebold struggled through crippling injuries to turn on his oxygen and just to stay conscious.